Pune: The district administration is starting 321 new citizen facilitation centres (Maha E-Seva Kendra) in the city and district areas. The administration officials are training the centre operators, but to the coronavirus outbreak, the training program is being done at the tehsil centre level.

The citizen facilitation centres help citizens to get their pan card, passport, income tax return filings, ration card, property documents, birth certificate, income certificate, caste certificate and other documents. These centres also facilitate the Aadhar registration and rectification process for citizens.

In areas severely affected by the coronavirus outbreak, only a handful of Maha E-Seva Kendra, Aadhar centres, Setu centres and Aaple Sarkar centres are functioning. On this background, the district administration has decided to start new 321 centres in the district.

The district officials had floated online tenders for the centres. About 1200 applicants had submitted their tenders after which they were scrutinised. The eligible candidates were selected and their identity number has been created. Before starting the centres, the operators are being trained by the officials.

Officials said, "Due to the COVID-situation, it is not possible to give training to all operators at a time. So we have decided to train them at taluka and tehsil level in villages and cities respectively. These new centres will operate in the non-containment zones only."

The number of centres is decided according to the population density. In Municipal Corporation and Council areas, one centre per 10 thousand population and for gram panchayats, two centres per five thousand population, and one centre per gram panchayat has been made mandatory by the government.